


a monster is not a monster when it's hiding in bright daylight

by llgf



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: ? - Freeform, Angst, Character Study, Confusion, F/M, I don't know what I wrote, Maybe - Freeform, kastle - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-28
Updated: 2016-08-28
Packaged: 2018-08-11 11:08:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,022
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7889086
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/llgf/pseuds/llgf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Karen sees him, he's eating cold beans. Frank wants to put heavy walls between them, but there's always a crack where he can sneak into.</p>
            </blockquote>





	a monster is not a monster when it's hiding in bright daylight

**Author's Note:**

> It's the first time I write Kastle, so I am super nervous but I love the relationship. So here's my little drabble/one-shot. (And sorry for the mistakes, this is unbeta'd)

                      Frank often leaves a can open on her kitchen table, empty, fork on the side; sometimes it's beans, or raviolis. He’s the ghost; he left the window open and the curtains fly.

He's a ghost.

He’s named like that sometimes. When her new colleagues, bored while waiting for another bloody murder in Hell's Kitchen, ask her where she gets all her information, how she knows everything before anyone else; she answers, the corners of her mouth tickling – “a ghost.”

A ghost; because he’s _already dead_ – the sentence is punctuated by his voice, his gravelly gravity, when she thinks about it.

He’s a ghost; officially dead, unofficially living. Since the ninjas on the roof, some people swear to have seen The Punisher, a bright white skull on the chest.

**Is The Punisher still alive?**

She refused to write this article, at first, despite Ellison’s requests – “come on, you know him better than anyone,” he said to her. It’s true.

“That's why I can’t,” she replied.

He rubbed his beard, his eyes closed – a gesture of exasperation she can recognize now. “Fine, I'll ask someone else,” he turned around briefly, his hand on the handle, “and take care of yourself, okay? I shouldn’t worry about getting enough money to send my children in college _and_ your well-being, okay? Okay.”

 _I won’t end up like Ben_ , she wanted to answer, but instead – “Wait.”

He smiled, simply, “’knew it.” Ellison nodded, pointing a finger at her, “3k words for Friday.”

He left, she’s alone, she can huff loudly in her office, pictures of corpses, guns, staring at her, scattered on her desk. _Is The Punisher still alive?_

Her fingertip on the x-ray – on the black dot, it’s weird maybe, but she feels like she could dig a finger into his brain, his mind; she wants to – and something keeps her from letting someone else write an article about him. About The Punisher, who wanders the streets of New York, playing _the judge, jury and executioner_ ; because that’s all they see (or want to see) – the monster.

But Karen, it happens more often that she would like, she writes “Frank” on her draft.

The bar is flashing next to his name in the empty word document.

**Frank |**

**Is Frank still alive?**

“Frank”, that’s what she writes on her drafts. It’ll become “The Punisher” on the final article.

She finds it easier to write about Frank than about his moniker personified. He’s not Captain America, he’s not a symbol, he’s just a man. People like to hide him behind a villain name to forget that he’s merely _human_ – like they did with Gods.

He has so many names, no one seems to really know who he is.

Karen knows. She knows Frank. But she prefers to stay quiet about it – in her articles, or with her colleagues, for an obvious reason. It’s not a lie, she simply omits to say that every night, she opens the door slowly, waiting for him to appear behind it, sitting on the lonely chair by the table, eating cold beans.

_“You can warm that up, you know.”_

Or on the couch, bleeding mouth, wearing a constellation of purple, yellow and blue on his cheeks. Sometimes she wonders if he simply likes being hit as much as giving the punches – _“what did you do this time?”_

She remembers the first time her thumb stroked his cheek; gently because the skin was swollen and fragile – and she could see in his eyes the estranged (or maybe forgotten) feeling of comfort, something undeserved for a man who still has dried blood under his fingernails.

“Sorry,” she mumbled – Karen still wonders why she apologized; but he only nodded.

                      There is a red spot on her carpet, and she remembers lying to Foggy about it. “Wine stain,” she said, with a shrug. She had been surprised by how easy was the lie. She became a liar – odd for a journalist.

But the badly plastered bullet holes on the walls were pretty incriminating. There are too many stains, of different shapes and colors, tainting her home, her memories.

It's always easier to lie than to say, “Frank”; thick blood running down his face, staining the carpet.

Basically, it's just Frank.

A man staggering between life and death, between Frank Castle and The Punisher. A ghost.

Death suits him so well; this white skull on his chest.

The first time he came back – from the dead, perhaps – he had a knee pressed on a man's back, his arm bent at an odd angle, his cheek pressed on the ground. “He was following you,” he simply said, “because of your article.”

“You broke my door,” Karen responded, one hand on her pitching door, a single hinge holding it and the other curled around her .380 in her bag. Her voice trembled more than she liked, but it was as if her heart stopped when she saw the door ajar – _your dangerous game finally made you win something._

Home is supposed to be a synonym of “safety”; but it already had had a body in the middle of her living room, its walls are stained white to cover bullets, and marked by long katana claws. Karen trembles when she puts the key in the lock – she blinks, breathes, and sees her keys on the floor, without a sound – because she’s expecting a ninja, a Russian killer, or an American financier who wants her head on a spike. _Your dangerous game finally made you win something._

“You need more protection,” he replied simply, “better door, better windows, anyone can come here. You need protection.”

“From who? You?” she puffed, her hand tightening around the gun.

Frank looked at her. With this look. As if it wasn't not blood that flowed from his mouth, a look so _sweet_ and yet – yet his look was like claws clutching her ribs, a hand clutching her heart. He’s a destroyer, with or without weapons, with or without words. And that fucking look, as if she came from another world, as if she wasn"t possibly real, as if she was the answer.

With this look, he takes some steps back from the truth: she’s just the fucking problem – she knows when she looks at herself in the mirror.

“Yes.”

She told him to leave, to take the man with him, and to _not_ kill him. She knows it was useless, but she likes to pretend otherwise.

                      “I fixed your door.”

Frank is sitting on the couch, elbows on his knees, back bent, as if he has the weight of the world on his shoulders.

“Thank you.”

She puts her keys in the bowl near the door, it was almost too loud in the silence.

“Coffee?”

                      Frank says he’ll check on her. She almost wants to bark back that she doesn’t need it, but she keeps her mouth shut. The most dangerous man in Hell’s Kitchen is her “guardian angel” – and maybe deep down that’s what it is.

But she’s not afraid anymore when she pushes her door. She doesn’t tremble when she presses the needle into his red and swollen skin. He still has millions of colors on his cheeks, different each time, like Rorschach stains.

She gently passes her thumb over his cheekbones, the colors like wet dots of paint – there is a red spot on her thumb.

He uses another excuse one day, “I’ll keep coming here until I can’t, ma’am,” as she sutures his eyebrow, thankful that he couldn’t see her face – it stiffened.

“Who will stitch you up, huh?” Amused, she bites her cheek to keep from asking; _why_?

Frank laughs, smirks and not another word. He closes the door without a sound.

                      The nail of her thumb scratches the corners of her mouth. The bar flashes.

**Is Frank still alive?**

A schizophrenic feeling settles; she doesn’t know, she doesn’t _remember_ whether this article is about Frank, the Punisher or the soldier.

_I swear I saw him, he had a big weapon in his hand, and a thing on his chest, but it was him! I swear! I followed the trial, I know what he looks like. It was him._

She has a file, full of this, testimonials swearing to have seen The Punisher in the city.

But nobody sees Frank. Never.

 _Fuck_.

Who is Frank, who is The Punisher?

Karen rubs her forehead, trying to scratch away, to destroy, the idea that, maybe, it's the same person.

Standing in the middle of a House of Mirrors, she wonders if the reflection is Frank’s or someone else’s. Then smoke obscures everything – it's pitch black.

 _Coffee_ , she needs coffee to clear her thoughts.

She leans against the counter of her small kitchen, the warm cup in hand, and she looks at the blue light emanating from her screen, and illuminating the stained wall.

Her life is a monstrous mess, and it starts to attack her brain.

                      Karen is soaking wet – she always forgets to take her umbrella, her hidden optimism – when she sees him. He's on the stairs, a black cap on his head.

"I can’t come in," he says simply, not detaching his gaze from the sidewalk, “ma’am."

Her apartment is a veritable fortress now, thanks to Jessica Jones’ friend who advised her a specialized company.

She hesitated.

Matt (or Daredevil, it doesn’t really matter now) would have been proud of her, to shut the world out and its problems. It's probably the best thing to do to protect herself, the survival instinct prevails – but to be a survivor you need to face death.

Does she feel safer now that no one can go home? even Frank? the most dangerous man in Hell's Kitchen?

Is a reinforced door is more effective than this man?

_Yes, Karen. You shouldn’t need him, actually, you do not need him._

So she did, and every hammer blows rang in her head, _get away from me, get away from this thing._

_I'm trying, for fuck’s sake, I'm trying._

Heavy centimeters separating her apartment and the world outside, are they going to keep _him_ out? Maybe the thick windows will?

But it makes her ribs shrink to imagine a place, her home, without him, somehow; that she will not see him on her sofa, his mouth red with blood, still giving her his little smirk. It’s like a country without army, but with thick and impenetrable borders.

But Frank is here and alive, on the stairs, like he _belongs_ there.

It's silly, she feels dumb. A small voice in the back of her mind reminding her that Frank couldn’t possibly hurt her, and he would not let anyone do so. How easy it would be to hide behind the big bad and his pistols.

But she already has one – a gun.

Her fingers tightening around the gun, will that reinforced door prevent _her_ from leaving?

Karen is a journalist, she looks for filth and violence, she doesn’t talk about the best hot dog in New York; she seeks the truth, wherever it is.

It’s often at the end of Frank’s rifle.

She understands that it’s also for him, he wants her to secure her apartment – it’s a good reason to stay away. Maybe he just wants her to avoid more bullets, or maybe – _no_. She refuses to think too much about it, Frank is not that kind of hero, obsessed with this saving damsels in distress syndrome; and Karen is certainly not one of those.

Blurry sight, she sees two men, again, who is he really? why?

_It's just a fucking door._

                      “Good job up there,” he adds, without smiling. He looks at the floor, the thumbs up pointing at her window.

“It is ov –“

Karen stops, biting the inside of her mouth.

Her heart beats strongly, as fast as the rain hits the ground, like punches in her ribs spelling the word ‘fear’.

Karen is afraid; afraid to see him go, for one reason or another. She had grown accustomed to the character, his broken nose, his hoarse voice, black cap, and his black coffee without a hint of sugar. She’s simply used to see him, sitting there in the middle of her messy life, where he stands like a pillar among the rubble. Frank’s the only thing she tried to understand in her life, and like a ghost, he disappears.

She admits she was obsessed with Frank, what he was, what he represented – the monster who was already living under his skin before it took the shape of the Punisher.

She asked herself if she also likes to condemn criminals, somehow; through justice, first of all, and through black letters on a white page, divulging the truth.

She managed to see Frank, he writes his own truth on his jacket: a white skull; death.

Karen hides it, behind a smile, or a fake naivety, even though she does have blood on her hands.

There is nothing more destructive than to see our bare face, as she often does when, with her hand, she cleans away the fog on the mirror, and she sees it, _herself_.

Does that make her a bigger, scarier monster? One that hides under the beds, in the shadows. If she’s convinced that Frank is not a monster, why can’t she admit the same about herself?

_Because you’re hiding it. A monster is not a monster when it's hiding in bright daylight._

Karen is a monster hunter, yet, she is what she hunts.

Frank was the perfect distraction. He gave her information about the darkest corners of Hell's Kitchen, and for a few minutes, she forgot the big red dots in Wesley’s chest.

If she doesn’t condemn his crimes, she doesn’t condemn herself; she hides her monster behind his.

Maybe that’s why, as the words rolled from her mouth, she can’t hold them back, “you want to come in?”

He lifts his head, his cap still hiding half his face, but there’s an astonished eye “excuse me, ma'am?”

She clears her throat, like it would make the words easier to say, “You want to come inside?”

He frowns, a certain way, just like he did at the hospital, as if she was an incomprehensible mystery to solve, and she surely is. She gave up a long time ago.

Frank agrees, “sure”. He nods, hands in his pockets and casting a furtive glance around him before following her.

She doesn’t tremble when she puts the key in the lock.

He takes off his cap and runs his hand through his hair and on his face. It has less blue than usual, she notes.

Frank moves around, visits and looks at her apartment as if it’s his first time here. He seems like he’s taking more space than before, that he’s bigger, _out of place_ – “Nice work,” he says, near the windows, a finger tracing the frame.

“Coffee?” She doesn’t wait for an answer, because she needs to sound of the machine to swallow her thoughts.

“Sure.”

Her hands shake against the counter, her eyes closed and concentrating on the sound of the coffee boiling. She wants to scream, _why_ , without really knowing the exact question, but it itches, scrapes her tongue as if it wants to escape.

“Why?”

He is behind her, she can smell the gun powder like it was between her lips, and she feels the full weight of his excesses.

“Why am I here, Karen?”

She breathes loudly, almost as if she’s learning to. _Karen_. It’s the first time he calls her by her name.

“I don’t know,” she prefers to answer, because the truth is too difficult to comprehend, especially for her. Even if she should be used to give words to the truth, but she finds herself still standing in this fucking mirror house, incomprehension blurring everything.

Karen doesn’t know if he's alive, if he's dead, if she is, too. If she is a monster or a hero.

And she wants to end this.

She realizes when she suddenly turns to look at him in the eye, this ghost that haunts and obsesses her, but refuses to let him go.

He looks at her lips whilst she looks at the small scar on his forehead, where the bullet passed through. Then his eyes, which are too soft to belong to a man like him, and his broken nose, his purple cheeks and mouth.

Karen decides it's time to know if Frank is alive. But Frank’s decision is more forthright and reckless.

He takes her lips, abruptly, almost swallowing her breath. Her hands don’t shake when she pulls his belt, because she feels that this is how it’s going to be – like pulling a tooth.

It is frank, violent, her nails biting his flesh whilst his hands knead her breast. He lifts her, his mouth still against hers, on the counter, legs apart, and she widens the space for him to sneak into.

And he sneaks without discretion or shyness, he takes, as he gives, he kisses, licks and bites standing between her legs.

It’s fighting fire with fire, she responds and pulls the tooth with her fingers, not caring about the blood on her hands. She extracts it, with the vigor of someone who is used to it, because the necrotic tooth needs to be ripped off. He can be dead or alive, but he can’t be a ghost anymore.

                      She wakes up in the middle of the night. As she always does, at the exact same moment, 4:24, bright green numbers like insects glowing in the dark.

An empty apartment. Noiseless.

She hates it, now that these windows are thicker, she can no longer hear the sounds of the city nor its traffic. She feels like she is back to Vermont.

She only hears her breath, a reminder that she’s alone, she can only focus on herself.

 _Bullshit_.

She gets up, dresses in a shirt too big for her and turns on her computer.

The word document is still empty, except for the title:

**Is Frank still alive?**

**Is Frank still al**

**Is Frank st**

**Is Frank**

**Is Fr**

**Is The Punisher still alive?**

by Karen Page


End file.
